Pollen artist's fragrant labours not to be sneezed at

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Let the art flower ... Wolfgang Laib creates one of his works,
Pollen From Pine, on show at the Art Gallery of NSW from tomorrow
until November 6.Photo: Tamara Dean

The German artist Wolfgang Laib is not a man in a hurry. The
word patience, he says, does not come close to describing his
disposition.

"I think it's far beyond patience. To collect pollen in a meadow
is something completely different to what other people do," he said
yesterday, on a break from constructing a massive fragrant pollen
carpet on the floor of the Art Gallery of NSW.

Laib is an internationally acclaimed installation artist, but
the small, bespectacled man is most content in flower fields near
his village in southern Germany.

"I just take a small jar and tip the flower or the end of the
bushes into the jar," he said. "Pine pollen has much, but dandelion
or buttercup has very little so I can collect only one small jar in
four weeks and only make a very small work."

It takes a fortnight to collect enough of the golden dust to
create Pollen from Pine, which is among the works in his
exhibition, on show at the gallery from tomorrow until November
6.

Other works are made with natural materials such as rice, milk
and marble. Unsurprisingly, Laib is a big fan of recycling.

"I still have pollen from the first year I collected it, in
1977," he said. "If you are really careful - with humidity, room
temperature and keeping it dry - the colour, the texture, the smell
doesn't fade."

Laib, who lived in southern India as a child, originally studied
medicine but gave it up to concentrate on his art. Australian
pollen is particularly beautiful, he says, but he is less impressed
by the country's customs officials.

"Australia is about the toughest country in the world on
quarantine," he said. "When this exhibition opened in Perth the
museum really had to struggle with customs to get the pollen
through."